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Saturday, August 24, 2013

Urban Survival Kit for Kids

"When
you want to help people, you tell them the truth.
When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."
-- Thomas Sowell

From The Smiling Dog Saloon Files

In
This Issue:

1.Turning trashed mail into cash & other
landfill facts

2.DIY Pyramid stove, Solar water bottle heater

3.Eco Transportation on the cheap

4.Urban Survival Kits for Kids

5.Your 5-inch pocket knife could land you in
jail

One of the
biggest
components of modern landfill is food
waste - some 40% of landfill are leftover
meals and other food-based detritus.

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's
waste (especially food) so when I discovered
an app called LeftoverSwap was launching
at the end of this month, I had to share it.

As Inc.com describes it:

"Three years ago, Dan Newman was visiting his
friend Bryan
Summersett, in Seattle. They decided to order pizza.
A lot of pizza. "We wanted to try a bunch of them. But our eyes
were bigger than our stomachs," Newman says.

They couldn't finish it all, and wondered what they
might do
with the leftovers. "We had a bunch of pizza left over at the
end of the night, and we thought it would be great if we could
broadcast that we had pizza available."

Summersett is a coder, Newman an entrepreneur. When
they
get together, they often discuss business ideas. At the time,
they thought sharing leftovers may be a bit out-there. But,
these days it doesn't seem so strange: people are already
sharing everything from homes to bikes..."

Sharing a stranger's lasagna may sound icky but think about it.
How different is that from paying for prepared food that's been
sitting around a food court? And for families with picky kids,
this could be a godsend.Read more here:

There has been an approximate 100%
Increase in total recycling in the US in the past decade.The U.S. has the most pounds of trash per person per day (4.6 lbs of trash per person, 1.5
lbs of recycled materials per person)Aluminum can be recycled forever
with NO loss of quality (good thing since we use over 80,000,000,000
aluminum cans each year)Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles, most of
which are thrown away. In landfills, where plastic bottles are
shielded from sunlight, they will not decompose for thousands of years.The
energy saved by recycling one glass bottle would run a
computer for 30 minutes.

30 All-Time weather records were broken in 30
months…EX:The largest single drought
disaster declaration in history – 1,016 counties in 26 US states.

PM’s
Roundup of Useful Resources…

Ryan Romanes' 'Urban Survival Kit'
Teaches Kids How to Live in a City

The 'Urban Survival Pack' by New Zealand designer Ryan Romanes is designed to combat poverty in cities by providing
solutions for people with limited space and money. The compact boxed kit is put
together with inexpensive materials like oriented strand board (OSB) and
cardboard, which can be easily reused or recycled.

The contents of the kit include a bit of everything, like essential tools for
emergency situations, gardening tools and seeds.

These boxes are meant to be used as educational items in schools to teach
children how to survive in a city. Survival kits traditionally contain equipment for roughing it in the wilderness and
Romanes' 'Urban Survival Pack' is an interesting take on habits that should be
instilled in youth for survival in an urban setting.

Getting the kids prepared is
one thing but being able to do so while they’re out of your presence is another
thing entirely. Sadly, most of what you would want to include in a kit for your
kids is probably banned at schools, but here’s some ideas to get you
started: “One of our biggest concerns…

In under two
years, Seattle e-bike startup Clean Republic has gone from prototype to
delivery of more than 1,000 units. Clean Republic is a garage-based company
that markets an e-bike conversion kit for the do-it-yourselfer as well as its
Hill Topper electric bike kit -- basically a ready-to-install bike wheel with built-in electric
assist motor.

The beauty of the Clean Republic Hill Topper is that it installs in just about
3 minutes and it’s relatively inexpensive. It's available with an 11-pound
sealed lead acid (SLA) battery pack that delivers a 10-mile range or a more
expensive lithium battery that weighs about 6 pounds and gives a 20-mile range.
The Clean Republic Hill Topper is intended to assist, not replace the rider; as
anyone who has been to Seattle knows, a little help on the hills can be very
handy.

I always appreciate simple ideas like this one. The
following video shows how you can use simple soda bottles to heat water (or
whatever) to a hotter temperature then you could by simply placing a
black-painted metal container in the sun.

CONTRIBUTOR: N. Morgan. Getting the children use
to their police state tactics. Getting them conditioned to submit and obey.
Another example of how they are turning America into a complete police state.
ROSSFORD, Ohio - A training exercise this Rossford Wednesday morning left
students literally hanging on to the edge of their...

The average American household is earning less than when the Great
Recession ended four years ago, according to a report released Wednesday.

U.S. median household
income, once adjusted for inflation, has fallen 4.4 percent in that time,
according to the report from Sentier Research. The report is based on an
analysis of Census Bureau data.

The
Parting Thought – Not to worry in the land of the free!

Dear Unconcerned Citizen…

Your 5 Inch Pocket Knife Could Land You 3-5 from
Todd over at Survival Sherpa:

Is
that bulge in your pocket an illegal knife, or are you just excited to read
this article?

Huh!?

That’s
right, in case you’ve just returned as a 30 year castaway on a remote,
deserted island, there are laws that govern the length of your blade and
whether you need a permission slip from the State to carry (open or concealed).

Welcome
to Nanny State America! If you live here in these united States, pleading ignorance for carrying weapons
(knife or gun) is not going to get you off the hook with our ever ‘watchful’
enforcers.

If
you’re like most law-abiding people, you’re probably committing a-felony-a-day
without even knowing it.

To
understand and stay within the law, you’d need to either go back to your island
paradise or spend 8.31 hours per day for the next 2.7 years buried in law
books.

There
are 50 states, 57 according to the POTUS, that have different rules about
possessing and owning weapons.

If you
frequent cross state lines, you’d need to spend time researching all the state
laws for travel route.

Much of what the Poor Man
does is to promote the concepts of self-reliance, a voluntary society and economic independence --
writing articles, giving talks, maintaining blogs and an educational website --
he does for free. Donations made to support him in these efforts are much
appreciated.